HEALTH-AFRICA: Creating A Positive Public Image For Africa

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Anderson Fumulani

DAKAR, May 11 2003 (IPS) - -No good news ever appears to emerge out of Africa.

As a developing continent it is often inundated with negative reports of war, hunger, disease and death but the African Women’s Media Centre (AWMC) – a women’s media Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) – thinks it can change this negative perception.

To achieve this ambitious dream and with the help of a 1.5 million United States dollars in funding from Mellinda and Bill Gates Foundation the AWMC has launched a five-nation media coverage research of public health issues in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi and Senegal to sample out coverage of public health issues.

Sherry Rockey, Executive Director of the Washington based International Women Media Foundation (IWMF), an umbrella NGO for the AWMC, thinks the starting point will be a research project that identifies perceptions and gaps in coverage of major health issues like HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis (TB). She says the campaign, known as "Meitsha Yetu" (Swahili version of ‘Our lives’), will be launched in the subsequent two years of the project.

The research findings based on a cross-section of media coverage, Rockey says, will flush out gaps and also come up with recommendations on how the continent’s major public health issues should be addressed.

"We came up with this idea of the campaign as something that would involve a lot of people. We want to be sure that the media is providing responsible, accurate and relevant messages," Rockey said from Dakar, the commercial hub of Senegal, West Africa.

"We recognise the need for women in Africa to have on-going programmes and I think the media has such a profound impact on this. It can give people a certain perspective about the world that they live in, it is used by economic and political leaders to give people the perspective that they want to have and it can give people information that they really want need," said Rockey.

Giving an overview of public health issues in Africa, Dr. Jean Nachega, Director of TB/HIV Field Research Programme for John Hopkins University, said HIV/AIDS has affected over 40 million people world-wide – 80 percent of them in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Nachega said if media reported accurately about the situation on the ground mostly to encourage prevention messages and adherence to continued treatment, the face of public health issues would change in Africa. "There’s need for media to find a way to fight the issue of stigma. If women can be in control, it’ll be a breakthrough. You only need to go into the villages to see how AIDS is destroying the social structure," Nachega said.

He said there is a huge burden in sub-Saharan Africa and in countries like Botswana, up to 50 percent of pregnant women are HIV positive and one in three people are HIV positive and most of those people do not have access to ARV [Anti-Retro-Viral].

While HIV/AIDS poses the greatest challenge to Africa South of the Sahara, Southern Africa is also dealing with one of the worst food shortage crisis where over 14 million people are threatened by hunger. Other challenges associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic is the outbreak of Tuberculosis in most of the sufferers.

"HIV is one of the highest risk factor for reactivating TB. If someone has TB, you can be almost sure that they are HIV positive. Once you are HIV positive you have a 200 percent chance of re-activating TB," Nachega, a medical doctor said.

However, he added that it was possible to reduce infection rates even in circumstances where treatment was not available if there was genuine commitment by the political leadership as was the case in Uganda, Africa’s model example which saw a reduction in infection rates of up to 10 percent. "Teachers are very instrumental in this campaign against HIV. It does make a huge difference if an aggressive and pro-active approach is adopted," he said.

Coverage of public health issues by the media has brought about mixed reactions with specific emphasis on poverty and high illiteracy levels of people with HIV/AIDS and the implied belief that these people would not be able to follow prescriptive instructions on taking drugs.

But Nachega says that is no longer the issue because "There’s been more than expected adherence to treatment. We think putting more people on drugs is one of the best ways of fighting stigma because people say [that] if I’m found positive, there’s something they can offer me. If people get treated, there is also a benefit for the society and because the probability of their not infecting their partner is high it becomes the benefit of the sexual partner. The lower the viral level, the higher the probability of not infecting the sexual partner," he said.

While HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis takes centre-stage, Nachega said Malaria was also eating away most of the social gains by killing between 1.5 million to 2.5 million people mostly in African countries.

Over 30 million people, he said were at risk of malaria attacks because each year they traveled to endemic areas of Africa. "Once you’re out of the endemic area, you lose your immunity and when you come back, you’re likely get malaria and die. The risk is really high if you’re not a resident of a high risk area," he said.

When the media coverage research findings are released, the question will still remain whether it will make any difference as most of people are reported to be infected with HIV/AIDS sexual encounters and this means dealing with changes in behaviour. Can media in Africa change the behaviour of the people and help prevent diseases? "As you know changing the behaviour of people is a very complex process that still needs to be evaluated comprehensively," Nachega said.

Amie Joof-Cole, Director of AWMC, said the continent has a lot of resources which would help to change the face of coverage of public health issues. "Our aim to help women journalists in Africa to occupy leadership positions so that they can compete equally with male journalists. Also to enable them to network with other female journalists in the continent," she said.

"We have trained women radio journalists in Southern Africa region and in Nigeria on how they should report about HIV/AIDS, and giving it a human face, looking at more interesting angles to the story," Joof-Cole said

A media campaign to address public health issues and how they impact on women, she said, would be systematic and very focused for a three-year period to see how the media can provide relatively adequate coverage.

"We’re looking at this campaign not just as a once off campaign but a systematic approach to developing not just the capacity of the media but to develop campaign materials to address these three public health issues," Joof-Cole said adding that: "We want to touch the lives of women at community level," said Joof-Cole.

The AWMC is a project of IWMF launched in 1990 to strengthen the role of women in the news media worldwide based on the belief that "no press is truly free unless women share an equal voice." (ENDS/IPS/AF/WA/IP/AF/SM/03)

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